


Feathers and Scales

by pinkevilbob



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Wings, F/M, Meet-Cute, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkevilbob/pseuds/pinkevilbob
Summary: Jester finds an unexpected surprise on her favorite sunning spot.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 14
Kudos: 110





	Feathers and Scales

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I saw jadequarze's art of Mermaid Jester and Bird Person Caleb and I had to write something involving the two.

The first thing Jester noticed when she got to her favorite sunning rock was the smell. Like something was rotting. The next thing was the blood and feathers. Like when a seagull didn't get away from the water and the shark fast enough. The third thing was the man. And he was like nothing Jester had seen before.

Giant wings spurted out of his back and spread out of the rock that could barely be called an island. The orange feathers contrasted with the black of the stone and the ghostly pale skin of the man, but the feathers matched his long matted hair. He groaned but didn't stir.

Jester barely poked her head out of the water. Minus the blood, he looked like something from a bedtime story. His face was handsome in a strange way that Jester couldn't quite put her fin on. Perhaps it was that he had a good chin. Take away his wings and talons, replace his legs with a proper fish tail, and he would've made a perfect merman. Another groan escaped his lips and he stirred. With a startled squeak, Jester ducked back down into the water.

Timidly, after a moment, Jester risked another look at him. He was breathing heavily and had managed to sit up against the rocky ledge. Though it made Jester wonder how he even managed to get to the tiny rock island. There was no land for miles and he was obviously in bad shape.

Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and he stared at Jester. She swam backwards a little bit, but she didn't duck back down this time. Instead she stared back into his blue eyes.

He blinked slowly at her. "Are you real? Or just a vision?" A frown creased his face as he hissed in pain.

"I'm real. I'm Jester!" she said.

"Caleb. Caleb Widogast." His accent was thick and Jester couldn’t place it. Maybe it was the normal accent of bird people. Caleb winced as he shifted his wings. "Not that it matters much. You cannot actually be real."

Jester pouted. "And why's that?"

"A beautiful blue woman keeping me company during my final hours in the middle of the ocean? This is a hallucination," Caleb said. His breathing was heavy and labored. "But a nice one."

"I am real!" Jester insisted. She climbed up upon the rock and crawled over to him.

Caleb stared at her. "You, you are a mermaid?" His eyes then went wide and his face turned bright red. “And are very naked.”

“Yes to both,” Jester said, continuing her way over to Caleb. She could manage a little while on dry land, but it was tricky.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing clothes?” Caleb was looking at everything but her.

Jester giggled. “Only humans wear clothes, Caleb. Oh and you, I guess.” His clothes were old, worn, and brown. Not to mention torn up and stained with blood.

He scowled at this. “I am human.”

“Humans don’t have wings. Even I know that,” Jester said. Sometimes she would watch humans on their silly boats, but it was always from a distance.

“Oh ja, I forgot,” Caleb said. There was a deep sadness to his voice.

Jester placed a hand on Caleb’s arm. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Caleb stared at her. “Ja.” It was almost a breath more than a word.

“Now let’s see what’s wrong with you.” Jester lifted Caleb’s arm up and examined his side. Long claw marks raked the sides of Caleb’s coat, which seemed to take most of the damage, but some went deep into Caleb’s side. Even more blood seeped from Caleb’s left wing. She pursed her lips at it; she’d never seen such grievous injuries before. Though she’d never seen anything like Caleb either.

He tried to squirm away from her, but only gasped out in pain.

“Caleb! Caleb, you have to be careful. You’re hurt really badly.”

“Ja,” he panted out, “I noticed.”

She gently patted his arm. “It’s okay. I’m gonna fix you up.”

“What?”

Jester crawled back to the water. “I just need to go get some things. I’ll be right back!” She dove into the water and turned back waving. “Stay safe!”

* * *

Every breath hurt. Jester was a good distraction to the pain, but the hallucination decided to leave him. Caleb had resigned himself to the fact that Jester wasn’t real. Mermaids did not exist. Though, there were people who would argue that winged people like him did not exist either.

She had touched him,but the only explanation was that it was all in his imagination. Caleb never really had much of an imagination before other than daydreaming about cats, so Jester was a surprise. He missed her even if she was just a dream.

A splash interrupted his thoughts. “Cay-leb! I’m back!”

Caleb tried to sit up straighter, even though he knew she really wasn’t there, but ended up sagging back down from the effort and pain. He averted his eyes as Jester climbed out of the water, feeling the heat grow on his cheeks. “You’re back.”

“Yep!” Jester set down a bag made from weaved seaweed and began to pull out all sorts of things that Caleb couldn’t identify. She pulverized some seeds with a rock and squeezed something from a pod onto the powder. Once she mixed them together, she pulled up Caleb’s shirt.

“What are you doing?!” Caleb couldn’t get away from her before she slapped the paste onto his wounds.

Jester looked at him. “These wounds need fixing.”

“But why? You don’t know me. You didn’t have to come back.” The thought of never seeing her again made his heart sink.

“You were hurt. And it’s not like I could just come back here later to your bones,” Jester said. “This is my favorite sunning spot.”

Guilt. Caleb could understand guilt. “Ah ok-AY!” Jester slapped on some seaweed on top of the paste.

“To keep it from bleeding.” She moved behind Caleb. “Next is your wing. You have to let me know if it hurts or feels wrong, okay Caleb?”

He nodded and then remembered she couldn’t see his head. “Ja.”

Jester hummed as she went to work. Caleb couldn’t tell what she was doing, but he certainly felt it. Every twinge and pull. But he kept silent the whole time, bearing it all in silence. “There! All done!”

Caleb turned to see his now wrapped in seaweed wing and stared. “You actually are real.”

“Of course I am! What else would I be?” Jester asked.

“I,” he paused, “don’t know.” It felt wrong to admit to her that he thought she was a hallucination.

Jester frowned at him, but then smiled. “Well, I’m real. And I’ll be coming back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“To change your bandages,” Jester said. “I have to go home now otherwise my mom’s gonna miss me like a ton. But we can hang out more tomorrow.”

The idea of being alone so long out in the middle of the sea didn’t sit well with Caleb. But it wasn’t like he could fly yet with the condition of his wing. He was lucky to make it to the tiny island in the first place. “Oh. So you’re not the only one? There are more mermaids like you?”

Jester grinned like a cat that got into the cream. “There’s no one like me, but yeah, there’s tons of mermaids.”

“But none like you.” There was something reassuring to learn that Jester was one of a kind. Caleb wasn’t sure he could handle more than one of her.

“Right! But I can bring by one of my friends tomorrow. You’ll like him.”

“Nein!” Caleb said too loudly. “Sorry, I meant, can this be a secret? Between the two of us?”

Jester’s eyes grew wide and so did her grin. “Yes! Oh Caleb, this is going to be so exciting. I mean it’s going to take forever for you to heal, but I’ve got a lot of stories I could tell you and we can play games.”

He had no clue what kind of games mermaids played, but the thought of spending more time with Jester was a pleasant one. “Ja, I look forward to it.”


End file.
